August 13, 2007 in Software Development by Mark Levison

Waking up at 3:45 am isn’t the best way to start a conference. But it was the only way I could make it to Jean Tabaka’s session “Why I don’t like Mondays”. The effort paid off.

Jean’s talk riffs on the Boomtown Rats song “Why I don’t like Mondays” and poses the questions what’s wrong with Agile meetings and how to improve them. The presentation (pdf ) covered a lot of ground in 90 minutes:

  • Top 10 Dysfunctions of team meetings (aka smells): Meetings are repetitive, Same people do all the talking every meeting, …
  • How to fix the Monday Morning Blues: Purpose/Agenda, Ground Rules, Parking Lot, ORID, ….
    • Creative ideas (Roger von Oech "Creative Whack Pack")

    • Consider Meetings as mini iterations – they need to be planned and we should reflect on their outcomes.

    • Use ORID in retrospectives
    • Reflect briefly at the end of every meeting
    • Get the team to set our ground rules (i.e. no phone calls, email, …)

If you missed the session grab the slide deck and read Jean’s book – Collaboration Explained (heck buy the book anyway I did).

Later in the day I also attend Diana Larsen’s "The First Thing to Build: Leveraging Trust on Agile Teams". I was a lot more tired by then and so struggled to stay awake let alone focus. Diana spent a lot of time discussing how to build trust on a team and spot when the team doesn’t have that trust. Slides (pdf again).

Sorry I don’t have the energy for a better set of notes. I suspect all of my postings this week will be rushed.